There’s a common heartbreak for youth ministers – the heartbreak of seeing some young people not continue to follow Jesus. “You pour your life in your discipleship into these young people that they’ll, and hoping and praying that they will grow in their faith,” Al James, a Youth Ministry Advisor with Youthworks, told The Other Cheek. “And some of them did. And some of them are in ministry now, and some of them are faithfully living their life and faithful Christians in the workplace and in their families and that kind of thing. But I guess too many of them are no longer attached to a church, and I guess more specifically have kind of abandoned the faith. And I guess that’s, that’s kind of perplexing. And there’s heartbreak associated with that, partly because of what you pour into someone and what you are hoping and praying for them.”
James will bump into kids from youth group and from a time teaching in a Christian school. “There’s definitely been some surprising stories: kids that I thought there was no way that they were going to be walking with Jesus in 10 years time because they seemed not to be at the time, but they are now. And that’s incredibly encouraging. But then also the reverse is true as well.”
NCLS data from the Sydney Anglican diocese shows 35% of the children of church attenders over 15 and still living at home are no longer attending any church. Other studies [1] put the total number of young people dropping out of church in all denominations as high as 72% by the time they are 30. Motivated by his memories of those who persisted in faith and those who did not – a modern retelling of the parable of the sower – James has been researching the factors behind young people continuing to walk with Jesus.
Working with John Bellamy a researcher for Anglicare Sydney, James has taken NCLS data about young people 15 years and older who live at home attending churches and adding the extra info that Youthworks already had. Some 91 churches were analysed. The NCLS data means that children of church families were the ones being analysed.
Bellamy and James identified which practices were correlated with a higher retention rate. The strongest link was with “discipleship” The Other Cheek asked James to unpack what that meant practically.
Understanding the Bible
“Youth ministers, kids ministers, senior ministers… [are] reporting that the young people in their ministry have understanding of various theological concepts. One of the strongest correlations was to do with the fatherhood of God. So young people in their ministry have an understanding of the fatherhood of God, also the atonement. of our physical resurrection, of salvation by faith alone.”
Churches reporting that young people had a coherent understanding of faith also had high retention rates. Family life played into this, James said. “I think, is that the whole ecosystem of discipleship, which includes the home, which includes youth ministries, which includes serving in churches, all that sort of stuff, is producing kids that have an understanding of the faith that they’re inhabiting.”
Serving in church and being helpful at home also was found to be a statistically significant correlation with staying as a follower of Jesus.
“We found that there was a high correlation of where parents were talking about the Christian faith to their 12 to 18 year olds at home with retention of faith long-term,” James told The Other Cheek.
“And the reason that that’s noteworthy, I think is apart from the fact that it’s statistically significant in our research, but it accords with some fairly recent research from the States [2] as well, where they found that the number one factor in young people retaining the faith of their parents was talking about God at home in ad hoc, informal, impromptu kinds of ways. And so that makes sense for me that we would find that as well.”
Connected to the real world
Even ahead of family, deep theological understanding, and connection to church, “evidence of a faith that was connected to other parts of life was found in the strongest correlation in our research,” James said. Higher retention churches were significantly more likely to have had “some” or “a few” young people who had led others to Christ and significantly less likely to have had no young people lead someone to Christ.
James drew on his time as a teacher to give a practical example. “I was taking a relief lesson with some year twelves, and it was on the northern beaches of Sydney. A big topic on the Northern Beaches is who’s a Westie and who’s not a Westie. You don’t want to be a Westie. They were saying, well, if you don’t get the Manly Daily, then you’re a Westie. And if you live west of Pittwater Road, which is the road that runs basically along the coastline there, then you’re a Westie. And so you didn’t want to be a Westie.
“And as a teacher looking for teachable moments, I sort of got serious for a moment and said, “The Northern Beaches can be quite an insular and sometimes racist kind of place, you know that.”
“And the guy that I was talking to said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And he looked up the line, and he said, ‘Because she’s racist.’ And I was so surprised, and I looked up the line, and I said, ‘What? She’s racist?’
“And she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m racist.’ And I was like, ‘what do you mean?’ And then she talked about how on the school mission trips, it’s a Christian school on the Northern Beaches, the school mission trip, ‘there were Asians everywhere and they’re taking our jobs’ and all this sort of stuff. I was really blown away that someone on the school mission trip who was out there serving could not just be racist as a blind spot, but claim that she was racist. And I think the diagnosis for me was that she didn’t know the difference between the northern beaches culture that she was kind of in and around and the culture of the kingdom. So to me, that says that she hasn’t got a faith that is working in the world, that’s making sense of life.”
James describes the sort of faith that might help young people continue as disciples. “I mean in terms of integrated faith, faith that is robust and that is coherent, and that actually makes sense in the world that young people have got to live will speak into the situations and the experiences that young people have. And it’ll speak about gender ideology and sexuality, and it will equip young people to be able to be Christian in the world. That throws up all sorts of different challenges to them, whether it’s in their workplaces or whether it’s in their schools or whether it’s in their family or that kind of thing. But it actually will be able to answer these questions. There’ll be space for them to wrestle with these questions and that kind of thing.”
He points to the Barna research he mentioned earlier [2]. He quotes Barna president David Kinnaman: “The next generation’s disconnection stems ultimately from the failure of the church to impart Christianity as a comprehensive way of understanding reality and living fully in today’s culture.” And adds, “And I think that’s true. Christianity has got to be able to provide a coherent and a robust understanding for young people in the world that they’re actually living in, not just a world that doesn’t quite exist, if you know what I mean.”
“Young people are having to answer the questions and having to deal with things like gender ideology or things like their friends are transitioning, or this is actually happening in the world that these young people are inhabiting and even in Christian schools.
“The faith that these young people have needs to be robust and coherent enough that actually they’re able to wrestle with those things and not necessarily have the answers straight away. But I think that they need to know, and they need to be able to see that actually this wonderful and beautiful gospel and Christian faith can actually live actually equip them for the world that they really do live in.”
What comes next
James is clear on where his research leads us. Firstly, as a parent himself.
“I’ve got my kids listening into this, so it’d be interesting to see what they think about it. But I think one thing around that kind of robust and coherent faith thing, one of the things that I sort of regularly say to my kids is that doubts are okay. Doubts and questions, they’re normal and okay. So I try not to freak out when one of my kids has a difficult question or expresses doubt or that kind of thing. And part of why I will do that is I want my kids to have a faith that I want them to have the space to wrestle with faith, if that makes sense. I want ’em to have the space to go, does this faith work? And to be able to ask those questions, is this faith going to work in the world that I live? Is this faith going to work in the questions that I’ve got right now?”
And James has two thoughts for his fellow travellers on the youth ministry journey: “
- Young people need to not just receive instruction on the christian faith, but they need the opportunity to apply their faith within church ministries, in the home, in relation to doubts and questions. This is part of having a robust, coherent and integrated faith. It’s got to be more than knowledge and find its way into service, evangelism, wrestling with issues in the real world and genuine contribution to the body of Christ. We do young people a disservice when we see them only as vessels only to be filled with knowledge and don’t walk alongside them in living out their faith in a real and genuine way.
- View the discipleship of young people as a partnership with parents. The data is clear. Parents are very significant in the formation of young people. Churches and youth and kids ministries will do well to recognise this importance by both listening to and supporting parents as they disciple their kids.”
[1] Philip Hughes, Pointers, Vol.25, no.1, March 2015, pp.1-8
[2] David Kinnaman You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and Rethinking Faith , Baker, 2016 Kinsman is the President of the barna reseach group.